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Having guests in your home for a visit or a night of table games. Weekly ?

Listen to books on tape together and discuss your different thoughts or ideas about the books or authors.

Not much else I can think of. After being married 38 years it is quite hard to find things that we still have in common. Since I can still play tennis that is one of the outdoor sports we share and do together. When it is warm we play in the lake a part of each day for excersize. We paddle boat and go out on the pontoon boat when I have had enough excersize for the day. I'm looking forward to everyone's replies. Sheryl

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I could make a list of a million things to do together! We are easily entertained at our house, and that is without tv or movies...which might be why we have such a long list, come to think of it.

Are you looking for quiet pursuits, or more adventurous things? For quiet activities at home, we love to play board games. A few weeks ago, Gene read me a 600-page book, while I loomed a winter scarf for him and started an afghan for his reading chair.

Often, we'll sit across from each other at the dining room table and I will paint, draw, do crafts, or sew while he is reading or taking his medication. I know it doesn't sound like a "date" type thing, but we can happily while away a whole evening this way.

We also like to invite people over for snacks or dinner. It livens up the atmosphere, encourages us to get or keep the house clean, and expands our social circle, too.

We don't rely on just family members for this -- we've even been known to invite our grocery store clerk or people we've met at the coffee shop. We keep the meals very simple and cheap (nothing extravagant or time-consuming). We find that most people are thrilled to have any home cooked meal, even if it is just a roasted chicken and a salad or sandwiches and chips.

We throw small parties -- casual parties, mostly conceived by our granddaughter, for off-beat occasions, such as "April Fool's Day". This gets our family and friends together when on the major holidays they might be booked elsewhere. It only takes 3 people minimum to make a "party" so it's not like this needs to be taken to the extreme.

Our parties each have a theme, a project, and a meal/snack. For one, we made bird treats, rolling pinecones in peanut butter and then in bird seed. We served a chicken pasta salad with bagged chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

For a pre-Valentine's day party, we all made Valentines cards for each other and then took pictures with the cards we thus received.

We manage this simple entertaining, in spite of both of us having chronic illnesses. Since I'm apt to experience fatigue, we keep everything very low stress, limit the time periods (such as inviting people over for dinner from 5-7pm or a party from 2-4pm), stick to the idea of "good enough" instead of "perfect", and eliminate all other distractions in our life through our regular devotion to extreme simplicity.

I could go on forever! But the general idea is to just shake it up a little. Think outside the box. Make an effort to do something (anything) just a little bit different -- even if it is just serving dinner on the patio or making it into a picnic -- and it will truly reawaken your sense of joy, happiness, creativity, togetherness, and spontaneity.

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When I was married we used to love to build puzzles together. I know it may sound kinda lame but we had a blast doing it.

Now with Tom its scrabble or any word game. Hes so hooked on the puzzle word things in the paper with the words scrambled that I had to bookmark a cheat site for him if he got really stuck LOL.

We also love to watch the food network and write down one of the recipes and then go to the store and get everything and come home and cook it together adding our own touches to it.

Before Gia came along we used to wake up during the night and get up and go get a coffee and just drive around and pointing out places and our memories of this spot or that place etc.

I am now trying to get couples to do a progresive dinner things going... you know, you go to one house for one course, then another for the next etc then end the night with a night cap or a movie or game or just dessert.

I usually have everyone at my house because of the baby and with me not feeling so great most of the time now its easier. I have had people over just to sit in a new chair I bought.. any excuse lol.

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This is a great subject. I've found over the years of raising kids and being busy with work, and my husband losing his job and searching for another, now he's going to truck driving school, so I don't see him much anymore. I feel like we are drifting apart, so it's nice to see all the things you guys are doing to have together time.

ONe thing that me and Dave like to do is called Geocaching. You need a GPS to do it, but once you get into it, it is so fun. It's kind of like treasure hunting. There are caches hidden all over the place. If you checked it out, you'd find that there are quite a few in your own neirborhood. You have to create a team name, Ours is the Landpirates :P , and then you go to geocaching.com and get started. It gives you co ordinates to put into your gps for whichever cache you choose to seek, and then get in the car and follow the compass and see where it takes you. Some of the caches are actually boxes, like tupperware, or anything that keeps out the elements, there are things inside that you are welcome to take as long as you replace it with another item for the next cacher. Some of them are "micro" caches, which means it is very small, like a film container or smaller. And then some of them are "virtual" which are usually a historical site, or a sign that tells about the area you're in. We've learned a lot about our own neighborhood doing these caches, and it gets you out doors and walking. The kids love to go, or just me and Dave. If you do go to the site, you can look up our team profile, You'll find some pictures of some of our cache experiences there.

Thanks for starting this thread.

Happy people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have!

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My wife has a great tradition she started on valentines day. Sometime near the end of the work day my legal assistant will come in with a note from my wife. It is in the form of a poem and gives me a hint to the next location I am to go. It is like a scavengerhunt. At each destination there is a new poem and hint with a gift until we always end up meeting at our favorite restaurant. I look forward to it every year, and she hasn't failed me yet, this past year not counting because I was in the hospital. I wish I could say I do something yearly like that but about the closest I have come was a poem I wrote which hinted at a 7 day cruise for her 40th birthday. My wife is about the most creative person I know. I can;t hold a candle to her